Barnes & Noble's Online Arm
Pulls the Plug on E-Book Sales

NEW YORK -- In a move that caught many in the book industry by surprise, Barnes&Noble.com Inc., the online book retailer, has ended its sale of e-books, effective immediately.

The decision is particularly striking because Barnes&Noble.com assumed a leading role in the push to popularize e-books, even offering readers an original work of fiction by Dean Koontz, "The Book of Counted Sorrows," in e-book form two years...